德米斯·哈萨比斯回忆说，6岁那年，父亲曾对他说过一句全世界无数父母都会使用的鼓励话语——“尽力而为”。但对这个从小就展现出非凡天赋、后来成为全球最重要的人工智能领军人物之一的孩子来说，这四个字在他眼中演化出无限可能。
他表示：“我这个人有点极端。我会用一种极端且理性的方式去理解这句话。我当时在想：‘怎么样才算尽力？我怎么知道自己已经尽力了？是不是意味着要拼到精疲力竭、直至濒临生理极限，才算尽了全力？这不是很符合逻辑吗？’”
哈萨比斯在伦敦出席由Intelligence Squared举办的活动上发表了这番言论（有人调侃他的名字可以叫“智慧立方”）。与他同台的是作家塞巴斯蒂安·马拉比，他刚刚出版了哈萨比斯的传记《无限机器》（The Infinity Machine）。在被问到为什么选择在当时出书时，马拉比表示：“AI是当今世界最引人注目的变革，而德米斯·哈萨比斯则是这场变革中最值得关注的人物。”
“拼尽全力”，哪怕耗尽心血，一直是哈萨比斯的人生信条。今年2月在接受《财富》杂志采访时，这位Google DeepMind和Isomorphic Labs的联合创始人透露，他的工作日实际上分成两段：一段是大多数人熟悉的白天工作时间，另一段则是晚上10点到凌晨4点，用来推进“副线项目”和其他创意灵感。
他表示：“我把下棋时的训练方式（哈萨比斯13岁时就已达到国际象棋大师水平）用在了生活当中。我会非常有条理地从目标反推，拆解成一个个子目标。我觉得这种方法在生活中同样适用，至少我是这么做的，而且效果显著。”
不过，他并未选择全球AI创新圣地硅谷，而是扎根伦敦，这也让不少人感到意外。毕竟，DeepMind在2014年被谷歌（Google）收购后，搬到加州山景城似乎是顺理成章的下一步。
但哈萨比斯不以为然。他认为，如果要更好地平衡AI发展带来的风险与机遇，全球绝不能只有一个“思想中心”。
他表示：“我骨子里多少有点不服输。我希望证明我对英国的热爱，伦敦和英国同样具备成功潜力。但核心原因在于：我知道这里有人才。”
“我当时就判断，在DeepMind起步的前四五年关键期里，我们在这个领域几乎没有竞争对手。英国拥有大量优秀人才，但他们在美国却是被忽视的一群人。”
“随着DeepMind以及这里其他几家公司陆续取得成功，事实证明，‘深科技’完全可以在硅谷之外蓬勃发展。当然，美国的科技巨头和风投机构也意识到了这一点，并纷纷进场布局。如今，很多公司都把欧洲总部设在英国，尤其是伦敦。”
哈萨比斯表示，在2010年创立DeepMind时，他就已经坚信AI将成为一种具有颠覆性的技术。
他表示：“早在2010年，我们就已经以‘成功’为导向进行规划，这听起来很疯狂，因为当时其实还看不到任何进展。但结果确实如此。而推动这项技术发展的人，不应该只来自美国那块方圆20英里的地方。AI将影响整个世界，因此，无论是它的用途、部署方式、伦理问题，还是技术本身，都需要一个全球视角。”
“我们在伦敦建立了庞大的科研基地，汇聚了数千名研究人员。我们还在附近启用了一座全新办公楼，希望能让这场关于AI的讨论更加全球化，这不仅是为了影响谷歌内部，也是为了引领整个行业。”
尽管哈萨比斯曾直言他热衷于商业竞争（当ChatGPT先于Google Gemini发布时，他的反应是“这是一场战争”），但他内心深处更深层的驱动力仍然是人工智能在科学探索方面的潜力。他认为，“攻克疾病”和应对气候危机这些根本性挑战，正是AI能够发挥关键作用的领域。
此外，还有安全问题，尤其是在更高级别的通用人工智能（AGI）触手可及的当下。哈萨比斯表示：“我心里始终有一种挥之不去的紧迫感：有些事远比商业竞争更重要，那就是如何以安全的方式推动AGI发展，确保它带来的收益能够真正大于风险。”
他补充道：“我会全力以赴。但现在参与其中的已经不止我们一家，还有五六个领跑者，也包括中国及其研究实验室。所以接下来几年，这件事会走向何方，仍然充满不确定性。”
“在理想状态下，国际社会应当在安全课题以及如何权衡收益与风险等议题上，加强沟通与协作，尽管在当下的地缘政治环境下，这并不容易实现。”
在这场长达一个小时的对话接近尾声时，马拉比被问到：面对这样一项艰巨任务，世界是否可以信任哈萨比斯。
他表示：“我想我很有发言权。我不仅与他本人交流了30多个小时，还访谈了约100位相关人士，其中甚至包括一些老朋友，他们的孩子和哈萨比斯的孩子在同一所学校。他的价值观非常端正，这一点我很有信心。他首先希望AI造福社会；其次，他的核心驱动力始终是科学发现。这正是他自始至终的梦想，也是他的本色。”（财富中文网）
译者：刘进龙
审校：汪皓
When Demis Hassabis was 6 years old, he remembers his father giving him the age-old reassurance prompt used every day by millions of parents around the world—“do your best.” For a young Hassabis, already showing the precocious talents that were to culminate in his becoming one of the most important artificial intelligence leaders in the world, “do your best” opened up a whole host of possibilities.
“I’m a bit of an extreme person,” he said. “And I took it in a way [that’s] extreme and logical. I was sort of thinking: ‘What is your best? And how do I know I’ve done my best? It must mean to the point of complete exhaustion, just prior to near-death. Then you’ve done your best, have you? Isn’t that logical?’”
Hassabis was speaking at an event in London hosted by Intelligence Squared (there is a joke about Hassabis being “intelligence cubed”). Alongside him was Sebastian Mallaby, author of a new biography of Hassabis, The Infinity Machine. “AI is the most interesting transformation in the world, and Demis Hassabis is the most interesting figure in AI,” Mallaby said when asked, “Why now?” about the book.
“Doing his best”—to the point of exhaustion—has been a guiding mantra for Hassabis’s life. Interviewed by Fortune in February, the cofounder of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs revealed that he has two workdays—daytime hours that most of us do, and a 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift to execute “side projects” and other smart ideas.
“Using all my chess training [Hassabis was a recognized master-level chess player by the age of 13], that’s the way I think about life. In a very considered way, planning back from your goal, breaking that down into sub-goals. I think it’s generally applicable to life, or at least that’s what I’ve tried to do, and it’s been pretty effective.”
Being effective while based not in the global home of AI innovation—Silicon Valley—but in London, has raised eyebrows. Surely, after DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014, a move to Mountain View would have been a natural next step?
Not for Hassabis, who has argued that there needs to be more than one center of thinking in the world if we are to correctly balance the risks and opportunities of AI.
“There’s a bit of an underdog in me,” he said. “I wanted to show that I’m passionate about the U.K. and that London and the U.K. could do this. But the main thing was: I knew there was the talent here.
“I knew we would have the field to ourselves for about four or five years, the formative years of DeepMind, and we had this incredible talent that was being overlooked in the U.S.
“And with the success of DeepMind and a few other companies here, it’s shown that deep tech can be viable outside of Silicon Valley. Of course, the U.S. giants have realized this, both the VCs and the big tech companies, and they’ve invested now—many of them have their European head offices here in the U.K. and in London.”
In 2010, when DeepMind was founded, Hassabis was already convinced that AI would be the transformative technology it has turned out to be.
“We planned for success even back in 2010, which seems crazy, because nothing was working,” he said. “[But that’s] how it’s turned out. And the people that are making it shouldn’t just be from 20 square miles of the U.S. It’s going to affect the entire globe. So, I think a global perspective on AI, what it should be used for, how it should be deployed, the ethics of it, the technology itself, [is important].
“We contribute to that by having a big base here and thousands of researchers, and we’ve just opened a beautiful new office just around the corner as part of making that conversation global, even within Google, and hopefully for the whole field.”
Although Hassabis has said he likes nothing better than a commercial battle (when ChatGPT launched ahead of Google Gemini his response was, “This is war”), he is more motivated by the scientific discovery aspects of artificial intelligence. “Solving disease” and the climate crisis are, he believes, fundamental challenges AI can tackle.
There is also the issue of safety, particularly with the approach of the next level of AI: artificial general intelligence. “At the back of my mind, I’ve got this gnawing feeling that there’s something much more important, much bigger than the commercial race, which is getting AGI safely over the line for humanity and to make sure that the benefits fully outweigh the risks.
“And, you know, I’m going to try. We’re only one actor in this now; there’s five or six [other] leaders, and there’s China as well, and the Chinese labs. And so I think in the next few years, the story is still to be written on how this is going to go.
“There needs to be more cooperation and coordination at an international level, ideally—although that’s very hard with geopolitics as it is today—around safety topics and debates around the benefits versus the risks.”
Mallaby is asked at the end of the hour-long discussion whether the world can trust Hassabis with such a gargantuan task.
“I think I can say with pretty good authority—having not only talked to him for more than 30 hours but also talking to 100 other people around Demis, including bumping into old friends of mine who had kids at the same school as Demis’s kids—I really do know the person next to me extremely well. And I’m very confident in saying that his values are good. He wants this—first of all, for AI to be good for society. And secondly, his primary motivation is scientific discovery. And that’s what he’s dreamt of from the beginning. That is who he is.”